Students from Bedford Modern, one of the schools involved, wrote some of their impressions of the project afterwards:
Report 1
Three students from BMS were chosen to attend two workshops, one on Friday the 28th June and the other on Friday 5th of July to compose with members of the Britten Sinfonia and pupils form Upper schools from all over Bedfordshire.
Our target by the end of the two sessions was to have composed a soundtrack to a short piece of silent film, which was an excerpt from a government information cartoon about the worrying expansion and growth of industrialisation, causing environmental damage and over-population of Great Britain. We were inspired to write the score as a ‘tribute’ to Benjamin Britten, as this year is the centennial anniversary of his death. During his life as a composer, he wrote a musical accompaniment to a short documentary called ‘Night Mail’ which was based on how post was moved about the country by steam train.
Since there were so many musicians there (all playing different instruments and therefore all reading different music) we had to find an innovative way of writing down what we had composed. We did this by using a method few, if any of us, had come across before - drawing! We literally had to draw what the music would physically look like if we could see the sounds. Since most of the composition was based upon free improvisation it varied on both days but was improvised around 3 or 4 staple melodies and grooves. From what we could hear whilst we played it, the piece sounded like it had a very dense texture and will be very interesting to listen to from a non-players perspective.
Overall, the two days were not only brilliant fun, but also superbly beneficial in building our confidence when writing our own compositions. We also learnt not to over think things and ‘go with the flow’ when it came down to getting started! It was an incredibly worthwhile learning experience if a similar opportunity arose again, I’m sure we would all jump at the chance to take part again!
We cannot wait to hear the finished result which will be available to watch (and listen to!) through both the school website and The Britten Sinfonia website.
Report 2
On Friday 28th June and Friday 5th July, students from around Bedfordshire considered 'gifted and talented' in music attended a creative composition workshop. The event was expertly led by members of the Britten Sinfonia and Inspiring Music.
On the first day we dived straight in with a discussion about the nature of music after a brief introduction. We thought about what makes a successful film score, and how composers represent different aspects of a film in music. We then decided to watch the film we would be scoring for - a 1948 central office of information cartoon explaining town planning and counter-urbanisation. We considered all of the textures and colours in the film and discussed how we would show these in our score. After this we split into groups - two classical groups and one rhythm group - and began to compose.
One group of classical musicians set off composing a happy and calm texture to provide a background to the scenes in the countryside, and the other was tasked with creating a dark, gloomytexture for the city scenes. The rhythm group were asked to create two 'industrial basslines' for the city scenes and a calm texture for the country scenes.
We created our textures through improvisation and modification of existing ideas until we were satisfied. We regrouped and combined our ideas, teaching other groups how to fit in. For the rest of the first day, we thought about specific scenes through a similar process, such as the building of a new town and a 'light bulb' idea moment, expertly portrayed by the strings. At the end of the day we synchronised our current score with the film to create a base for our score.
At the start of the second day we did an exercise in improvisation. Some instruments provided a constant drone while other instruments improvised solos. This was a warm up for the day's activities. We then watched an excerpt from the film 'Night Mail' - scored by Benjamin Britten. We talked about its effectiveness as a score and thought about how we could incorporate someof his ideas into our own score. Afterwards, we split into groups to come up with a collection of melody lines, and we did this through a technique of improvisation over a drone or, in our case, a percussion and rhythm line.
Towards the end of the course we grouped together to discuss how to use our melody lines over our textures, and how to link each section of the score together. At the very end of the course we recorded our score with the film to create a soundtrack, which we then adjusted the timing of to create a final version.
This workshop was a great opportunity for all of the musicians who attended, and we are all thankful to the Britten Sinfonia for their support and encouragement during the course, and for hosting such a wonderful opportunity course.
Report 3
For the past two weeks Britten Sinfonia ran a workshop for several different schools, which were to submit at least 3 musicians to take part in the workshop. The main goal of the workshop was to compose a soundtrack to a short film, titled: New Town, which demonstrated the industrialisation of a small country town. We started by watching the film and choosing different themes to base our composition on and what ideas we thought we could incorporate. We then decided on a key and what chords or rhythms we could use. We were split into 3 different groups, the Rhythm section; which consisted of guitar, bass drums and percussion; a string section for the happy part of the film and another string and brass section for the industrial, negative side of the film, we came up with some very complex ideas and the three groups then integrated to share ideas and learn each other’s rhythms and melodies, it was a challenge working with other different groups of musicians. We did several smaller workshops focusing on specific ideas about melodies, noise, drones and rhythms which we then incorporated into the overall composition. It was great working with confident musicians who were all able to compose and play at a high level and we were able to write without exam board restrictions. I am looking forward to hearing the final recording on the Britten Sinfonia website.
The film and soundtrack is available to view and download here.
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